Story Bits
Been working way too hard...and got a story bit idea that I've been working on. High concept is "magical girl conspiracy stories"-
You're stuck, again, on the red-eye JAL flight out of SFO to Tokyo. Third time this month, and you're thankful as hell that you can claim to your bosses that you need a seat in Executive class. Flying the cattle car level of Economy would have driven you nuts in less than three hours, and a crazy mage is a mage that'll cause a plane to crash.
Oh, you wouldn't cause it crash deliberately, or even by accident...but, easier all around. You really wish you could have gotten a First Class ticket, but you haven't built up enough mileage in this identity to pull off the upgrade. Ugh.
There's only so much you can do-no way in hell can you even think of pulling out files to review, you've already bounced through everything on the in-flight programming that you can stand, don't want to break out your iPad and read some books...so, you have way too much time to think and consider just how ironic things are for you here.
God, was it only fifteen years ago you were in the nearly same place as Miyako? Barely fifteen, having just discovered magic, starting to fight the Fair Folk around your LA neighborhood, and then the Order discovering you. The interview in the coffee shop, with you realizing in the back of your head that an answer of "no, go fuck off and die" would not be accepted. Black ops mage training-you discovering how little you actually knew, how much you had to learn, how much you're still learning...intimidating.
Fifteen years of fighting the oddest kind of war-one where the few rules on both sides are iron-clad. Where there are times where you could have gone further-but you couldn't because of the damn Compact...
Seventy-three percent. On a good day, that's what you remember. Seventy-three percent of the people that the Fey take, you're able to recover and for the most part save. Mind-warping spells all around to keep the Compact safe. Deleting memories is very bad mojo and just altering them is more merciful, but using a spell to convince a barely pre-pubescent girl that she wasn't kidnapped by faeries but by a serial pedophile doesn't ever get any easier. On a good day, you remember that and realize that the odds are getting better, the hunts are getting quicker, and every year, things improve just that little bit. Another good number-a hundred and fifty years. A good estimate of about when humanity would have developed the tools and weapons to be able to tell the Fair Folk to go fuck off and die-you can't play here anymore, you're not too good with your toys.
On a bad day (like this flight was becoming), there's another number your remember. Thirty-six hours. That would be how long it would take for the Fair Folk to pretty much take the world apart and reduce the human race to hordes of scared refugees that the Fair Folk could farm for power and energy. If the Compact ever fell...you're certain you wouldn't survive that long, you're going to damn well go to Hell kicking and screaming, but still...thirty-six hours. And, probably, humanity wouldn't get another chance to trick the Fae into another form of the Compact again.
Miyako Ameratsu. You roll the name around in your head, thinking. Of course, you can sympathize for her going all Carrie in her magical girl war-parents reduced to quivering masses of human-shaped flesh that pretty much twitch and breath and don't do anything else because their souls were ripped out. Younger sister turned into a ballerina doll for the Lord Of Winter's entertainment. And, in a few hours, he'd have to convince her to not go after the Lord of Winters without him breaking the Compact. Oh, taking out the Lord would be great loads of happy-making (it wasn't so long ago you had to clean up after his last "world tour"), but the bastard is good-always on the right side of the line when he realized that the Striker teams were on their way. Catching him...you have to quiver with barely suppressed joy. Anybody that caught him wouldn't have to buy drinks for years.
You've really got to like Miyako-she's operating solo for the past six months, no support, no nothing but what the octopus that lives in her head was saying, and she was going after Virtues-level Fae and winning. So, here you are, flying on a plane to Tokyo where you have to find a girl that is barely operating on this side of sanity, tell her that she can't take the head of the monster that stole everything that mattered to her, and accept training to join what little safety the world has from the Fae.
Or put a bullet in her head.
There are days that your job just sucks.
You're stuck, again, on the red-eye JAL flight out of SFO to Tokyo. Third time this month, and you're thankful as hell that you can claim to your bosses that you need a seat in Executive class. Flying the cattle car level of Economy would have driven you nuts in less than three hours, and a crazy mage is a mage that'll cause a plane to crash.
Oh, you wouldn't cause it crash deliberately, or even by accident...but, easier all around. You really wish you could have gotten a First Class ticket, but you haven't built up enough mileage in this identity to pull off the upgrade. Ugh.
There's only so much you can do-no way in hell can you even think of pulling out files to review, you've already bounced through everything on the in-flight programming that you can stand, don't want to break out your iPad and read some books...so, you have way too much time to think and consider just how ironic things are for you here.
God, was it only fifteen years ago you were in the nearly same place as Miyako? Barely fifteen, having just discovered magic, starting to fight the Fair Folk around your LA neighborhood, and then the Order discovering you. The interview in the coffee shop, with you realizing in the back of your head that an answer of "no, go fuck off and die" would not be accepted. Black ops mage training-you discovering how little you actually knew, how much you had to learn, how much you're still learning...intimidating.
Fifteen years of fighting the oddest kind of war-one where the few rules on both sides are iron-clad. Where there are times where you could have gone further-but you couldn't because of the damn Compact...
Seventy-three percent. On a good day, that's what you remember. Seventy-three percent of the people that the Fey take, you're able to recover and for the most part save. Mind-warping spells all around to keep the Compact safe. Deleting memories is very bad mojo and just altering them is more merciful, but using a spell to convince a barely pre-pubescent girl that she wasn't kidnapped by faeries but by a serial pedophile doesn't ever get any easier. On a good day, you remember that and realize that the odds are getting better, the hunts are getting quicker, and every year, things improve just that little bit. Another good number-a hundred and fifty years. A good estimate of about when humanity would have developed the tools and weapons to be able to tell the Fair Folk to go fuck off and die-you can't play here anymore, you're not too good with your toys.
On a bad day (like this flight was becoming), there's another number your remember. Thirty-six hours. That would be how long it would take for the Fair Folk to pretty much take the world apart and reduce the human race to hordes of scared refugees that the Fair Folk could farm for power and energy. If the Compact ever fell...you're certain you wouldn't survive that long, you're going to damn well go to Hell kicking and screaming, but still...thirty-six hours. And, probably, humanity wouldn't get another chance to trick the Fae into another form of the Compact again.
Miyako Ameratsu. You roll the name around in your head, thinking. Of course, you can sympathize for her going all Carrie in her magical girl war-parents reduced to quivering masses of human-shaped flesh that pretty much twitch and breath and don't do anything else because their souls were ripped out. Younger sister turned into a ballerina doll for the Lord Of Winter's entertainment. And, in a few hours, he'd have to convince her to not go after the Lord of Winters without him breaking the Compact. Oh, taking out the Lord would be great loads of happy-making (it wasn't so long ago you had to clean up after his last "world tour"), but the bastard is good-always on the right side of the line when he realized that the Striker teams were on their way. Catching him...you have to quiver with barely suppressed joy. Anybody that caught him wouldn't have to buy drinks for years.
You've really got to like Miyako-she's operating solo for the past six months, no support, no nothing but what the octopus that lives in her head was saying, and she was going after Virtues-level Fae and winning. So, here you are, flying on a plane to Tokyo where you have to find a girl that is barely operating on this side of sanity, tell her that she can't take the head of the monster that stole everything that mattered to her, and accept training to join what little safety the world has from the Fae.
Or put a bullet in her head.
There are days that your job just sucks.